For those of you who passed on the Phenomenon box set, individual releases of Spectral, Please and Defector are now up for grabs.
Spectral and Please have one disc of the previous remaster, one disc for Steven Wilson's remix, and a third disc containing the SW 5.1 mix on dvd.
Defector has one disc of the previous remaster, a pseudo 5.1 mix on dvd, and a third disc with Steve's live set at the Reading festival in 1981.
Worth buying? I'd say yes.
I really enjoyed SW's remixes of Spectral and Please - they do sound a little clearer, with better separation of instruments and a warmer bass/drum sound. Singing is definitely clearer, and I liked the clearer demarcation between tracks on Spectral compared to the older LP version where they tended to overlap.
The sleeve notes on Please were particularly enlightening, as they revealed Steve's desire to create an ensemble album rather than a guitar solo album, so the remix actually has some of his guitar parts a little lower in the mix to emphasise the collective group effort, and it works.
The surround mixes are good - nice sound stage, nothing fancy, but again opening up the sound a little more and giving you the chance to hear each musician's contribution a little more clearly.
The Defector package may seem a bit weak by comparison but I enjoyed it as much as the other two - the surround mix is fine and again opens up the sound. The live cd is a cracker though! I know Steve has released a fair bit of archive live stuff but this particular set is a highlight for me. The Reading Festival crowd were always a lively bunch and the band riff off that with a set that really rocks. It includes cuts from Cured, but they sound so much better with the likes of Ian Mosley powering them along on the drum kit. I suspect this set was recorded by BBC Radio so the sound quality is excellent, but no overdubs etc, so as live and raw as it gets.
I swithered about buying these three reissues, but having spent all weekend playing them and then playing them again, I'm really pleased with them, and they've stimulated me to finally get beyond Steve's Charisma back catalogue and into the later music he created.
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